I am wondering how they intend to keep the smoke from year round burning on the 2 acre properties where it will take place.
As a citizen of the Cowichan Valley and one that has children and grandchildren that live here I am appalled that North Cowichan would be willing to take such a giant step backwards in regards to public health, wild fire risk, and climate change. I live on 13 acres of forest and pasture and have not felt the need for any type of “clean up” fire in 5 years.
I leave some piles of branches in the forest where they break down slowly while providing habitat and sequestering carbon. I take some to the local recycling facility where they can be dropped off for free and are again composted and returned to the soil. Many landscape and tree service companies have portable chippers which will chew up all of the branches and sticks and leave them for you to use as mulch, or hall them away if you don’t want them. If it is too big to chip, someone would be happy to use it for fire wood.
The only logical reason to burn is if the wood is treated or painted, which would require paying by the ton to get rid of it at a transfer station. So be sure that when you see those columns of smoke rising from the large parcels, the lead in the paint, arsenic in the preservative, and hosts of other toxic chemicals in the assorted construction and demolition materials, will come raining back to earth on you and your families as well as me and mine.
The CVRD with support from North Cowichan has been a true leader in air quality and climate action, it would be a shame for North Cowichan to drag us all backwards. If you can do it, why not every region. Two months of the year is more than enough time to allow open burning, and in fact we should be phasing it out all together. For a sustainable future, it is the only logical path.
As a fellow citizen of planet Earth, I believe my opinion counts as much as anyone living inside the boundaries of North Cowichan. Please toss this part of the bylaw into the incinerator of history.
Thank you for your consideration.
David Slade
Cobble Hill
